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Former Carton House co-owners withdraw care village planning application that faced widespread local opposition

Plans had included three-storey 92-bedroom care home and two two-storey sheltered accommodation buildings

The former co-owners of the Carton House golf hotel (above) have withdrawn their planning application for its proposed Carton Care Village complex on lands at Carton Demesne near Maynooth

Thu Dec 7 2023 - 17:26

The former co-owners of Carton House golf hotel have withdrawn their planning application for its proposed Carton Care Village complex on lands at Carton Demesne near Maynooth, Co Kildare.

In October, Carton Demesne Developments Ltd lodged plans for a three-storey 92-bedroom care home and two two-storey sheltered accommodation buildings comprising 40 independent living units.

The firm is controlled by the Mallaghan family. In 2017 the Mallaghan and Kelly families sold Carton House golf hotel and resort for €57 million to Irish-American businessman John Mullen in a National Asset Management Agency-backed sale. In the deal, the Mallaghan family retained areas within the estate.

The family firm’s proposed care facility, to be located within the walled gardens to the northeast of the house, has encountered widespread local opposition, while the Department of Housing also voiced “grave concerns” over the proposal.

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Kildare County Council was due to decide on the application on Tuesday, December 12th. However, ahead of the decision, in a letter on behalf of the applicants, BMA Planning has withdrawn the nursing home planning application.

In the letter BMA Planning said that the applicant intends to engage with a number of the issues raised in the observations “and intends to make a new application at a later date”.

In its submission the Department of Housing said that it had “grave concerns about the scale, location and character of the proposed development”.

The department said the proposed nursing home use was “not readily reconcilable with the overall heritage offer of the site, nor is it likely to remain as an accessible heritage site for the wider public to visit”. It said the 18th century walled garden at Carton House had “the potential to be a significant heritage asset both for local residents and tourists, and to add greatly to the overall understanding and integrity of the demesne”.

It added that development at the proposed density “would foreclose any possibility of restoring the walled garden’s fundamental character, and as such would represent a significant loss for future generations”.

The council received over 100 submissions from individual local residents who expressed concerns that the scale of the project was excessive, arguing that there were large tracts of unused land within the estate which would be much more suitable.

However, BMA Planning told the council that the proposed care village “will be sensitively located within the walled garden”. The consultants state that the walls of the garden “will be sensitively restored as part of the project”.

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